Apple Launches Service For Transferring iCloud Photos, Videos To Google Photos (macrumors.com) 24
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple this week introduced a new service that's designed to make it quick and easy for iCloud users to transfer their stored photos and videos to Google Photos. As outlined in an Apple support document, you can go to Apple's privacy website and sign in to see the "Transfer a copy of your data" option. If you select this and go through all the steps, Apple will transfer your iCloud photos and videos to Google Photos. Transferring photos and videos from iCloud Photos does not remove the content you have stored with Apple, but it provides a backup method and stores a copy of the content on Google Photos.
The transfer process takes between three and seven days, with Apple verifying that the request was made by you. To do the transfer, you must have two-factor authentication turned on for your Apple ID account and you must have a Google Photos account with enough storage to complete the transfer. Smart Albums, Live Photos, photo stream content, some metadata, and some RAW photos are not able to be transferred.
The transfer process takes between three and seven days, with Apple verifying that the request was made by you. To do the transfer, you must have two-factor authentication turned on for your Apple ID account and you must have a Google Photos account with enough storage to complete the transfer. Smart Albums, Live Photos, photo stream content, some metadata, and some RAW photos are not able to be transferred.
Oh yeah, I can see the appeal (Score:2)
Because it's sooo hard to keep local copies of your (YOUR!) photos and copy them yourself to Google Photo.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's sooo hard to keep local copies of your (YOUR!) photos and copy them yourself to Google Photo.
You can do that manually photo for photo if it floats your boat. Since I'm generally not interested in wasting my time doing tedious manual labour if I don't have to I'm going to pick the automated option.
Re: Oh yeah, I can see the appeal (Score:2)
And when your account gets hacked, or the company decides to "bring our customers better, richer services and experiences", you will wish you did all of that 'tedious labor'.
Buy a cheap external drive or two, copy everything wholesale to that drive, don't bother ordering and sorting if it bothers you that much, and put it away somewhere safe.
Re: (Score:2)
I presume it's to preempt any EU antitrust charges of monopolistic lockin.
Re: (Score:2)
> I presume it's to preempt any EU antitrust charges of monopolistic lockin.
Does Apple still print photos books and stuff? Maybe they're going to exit businesses that aren't very profitable. Or are aimed at boomers who aren't good for the brand image.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because those services either aren't as popular, or they refused to work with Apple to make it possible?
Google Photos might be incredibly popular a service so Apple is simply adding support for it. And Google and Apple work closely, so it's likely Google took it as an opportunity to get more photos for their service.
The other services may have r
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
What lock-in?
A quick look in the Apple Photo app:
> Select all photos, select Export Original (or Share on iPhone) and do whatever you want with the photos.
iCloud is a nice feature for automatically syncing between Mac and iPhone, or offload from the iPhone storage, but it's neither required nor necessary. And it is easy to export/share from the photo app.
Apple may be guilty of a lot of lock-ins, but not in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
I presume it's to preempt any EU antitrust charges of monopolistic lockin.
Doubt it. You could always just "export unmodified original" of all your photos as one operation - or the processed versions, if you prefer that - and then import that tree to whatever you want. This just streamlines the process so you don't need to go via local storage/bandwidth.
Re:Oh yeah, I can see the appeal (Score:4, Informative)
Because it's sooo hard to keep local copies of your (YOUR!) photos and copy them yourself to Google Photo.
For consumers with limited bandwidth options (speed and/or data transfer caps) but with a history of content gradually uploaded from their mobile phones via hotspots or while traveling over the past many years (I dunno, let's say 5 years), the appeal is rather tremendous! It would also allow easier sharing with family/friends who already embrace the Google ecosystem.
Just because YOU might not use this service offering, it doesn't mean OTHERS may not be interested. Sheesh! Kids these days!!!
Re: (Score:2)
And because Apple cripples other cloud services on iOS devices. They are not allowed to run in the background for long periods doing uploads, so you have to keep them open all the time. iCloud seems to be exempt.
Re: (Score:2)
I can see how this might be very appealing to people whose phone servers as their primary "camera".
If you're shooting with a dSLR, on the other hand, you're almost certainly already making a local copy of your photos before uploading them to iCloud or Google (or SmugMug, or ...).
Re: (Score:2)
I take photos with my cellphone, then I upload them to my computers and store them in my personal NAS and backup drives. If I put them somewhere online, it's only as secondary storage.
The problem isn't whether people use a DSLR or a phone as their primary camera, it's whether they use a cloud service as their primary form of personal storage. Of course, if you put all your eggs in the Apple basket, you might be really happy if they decide to allow you to transfer your eggs to another basket. My point was, d
There is a good reason though (Score:2)
Because it's sooo hard to keep local copies of your (YOUR!) photos and copy them yourself to Google Photo.
It is harder than it seems if you've been using one model of phone for a while.
I finally broke down and had to turn on the option to upload originals to the cloud, because the photo library of all originals was taking up way too much space on my phone. So, someone may not have all the originals around and have to re-download.
Yeah you can download originals after that upload it to Google, but that uses
Re: Oh yeah, I can see the appeal (Score:1)
You'd be surprised what Apple users think is "hard" and what they think is "easy".
It's like a system designed entirely for your grandma that used to forward e-mails by printing them out, laying them on the copier, making a copy, then walk over to the scanner, scan it in, and mail that to you "because it is easier than using a computer".
Why (Score:3)
Why would I want to give all my photos to an ad network
Watermark (Score:3)
Can they add a "Taken using my iPhone camera" watermark to all my photos before transferring? That would be very helpful.
Re: (Score:3)
Can they add a "Taken using my iPhone camera" watermark to all my photos before transferring? That would be very helpful.
Camera type - and other information, like iso/shutter speed/aperture/lens/gps etc - is already part of the Exif information [wikipedia.org] embedded in the photo file.
well that's out of character (Score:2)
what next? an iphone where users can actually see the files on it?? what is this world coming to?
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder what motivated the owners of the world's biggest proprietary walled garden suddenly to open the door wide like that? what next? an iphone where users can actually see the files on it?? what is this world coming to?
Photos were always available - just select all, and then export them - either as unmodified originals or processed versions. They also do have a file app [apple.com] for iPhones and iPads.
Remember whem it was just ... file systems? (Score:3, Insightful)
~ $ cat bin/cp-icloud-gphotos
#!
# pseudo code
mount -t fuse.sshfs $USER@imaginary.icloud.apple.com:/~$USER ~/icloud
mount -t fuse.sshfs $USER@imaginary.photos.google.com:/~$USER ~/google
cp -a icloud/* google/
umount icloud google
Now "There's Am App For That(TM)", because there HAS TO.